Quickies: Intersex and Proud, Juice is Bad For You, and ‘Dear White People’ Needs Work

People think juice is good for them. They’re wrong. – “Mrs. G. came to our offices for her first visit distraught. Her primary-care doctor had just diagnosed her with diabetes, and she was here for advice. She was shocked by the diagnosis. She had always been overweight and had relatives with diabetes, but she believed she lived a healthy lifestyle. One of the habits that she identified as healthy was drinking freshly squeezed juice, which she saw as a virtuous food, every day. We asked her to stop drinking juice entirely. She left the office somewhat unconvinced, but after three months of cutting out the juice and making some changes to her diet, her diabetes was under control without the need for insulin.”

Nia Long’s Lesbian Character in “Dear White People” Sure Was Underwhelming – “Two weeks ago, Netflix gifted us a series based on the acclaimed 2014 film Dear White People, and what’s more, they gave us the incredible gift of seeing Nia Long play a lesbian professor. Those are significant gifts, to be sure, but unfortunately the show overall, as well as its handling of Nia Long’s character specifically, often misses the mark despite its best intentions.”

Intersex and proud: model Hanne Gaby Odiele on finally celebrating her body – ” ‘The medical world tells us that we should not talk to anyone about it,’ she says. ‘Always, I was told to hide.’ In this way, children like Odiele are taught to be ashamed of a fundamental aspect of their identity: they are intersex. It’s difficult to calculate the exact number of people who are intersex, but interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth estimates it to be about 1.7%, which is about as common as having red hair (1%-2%).”

Why Do Larger Clothes For Women Often Fit So Badly? – It’s pretty much what you expect: women’s clothes are designed for models at smaller sizes, and then simply sized up. Unfortunately, increasing the dimensions of clothes doesn’t mean it will fit right on a larger person.

What General Motors Did To Flint – “But Flint fell alongside GM too, both as plants closed and jobs moved overseas and the city’s own tax base eroded when GM moved outside Flint proper to its suburbs—moves subsidized by Flint itself for the sake of its largest and most vital employer. In building a city around GM to thrive, Flint laid the foundation for the conditions of the city’s water crisis—which began three years ago this week—to explode. And emails obtained by Jalopnik through open records requests show GM’s water problems were far more extensive than previously disclosed, including issues at its assembly plant in the city that have gone unreported until now.”

One Comment

Places like Flint are a common thing throughout much of Middle America. (And no, yuppie Dems didn’t help; they actually made a point to be worse than Reagan.) Now keep in mind that a lot of these former workers didn’t vote for Trump so much as they simply don’t vote now; why should they? In the absence of that, white suburbanites vote for Trump…and win. (There’s always been this subculture, of course. The Princes and DeVoses come from Michigan, after all. But it was fringe.)

(As an aside, it’s really jarring to watch The Music Man and as they sing “Gary, Indiana”, considering what it’s like there now.)